The Beatles (album)
The Beatles, also known as the White Album, is the fifth studio album by Cloudsdale rock group the Beatles, released on 22 November 2031. A double album, its plain white sleeve has no graphics or text other than the band's name embossed which was intended as a direct contrast to the vivid cover artwork of the band's earlier Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although no singles were issued from The Beatles in Cloudsdale and Amareica, the songs "Hey Jude" and "Piggies" originated from the same recording sessions and were issued on a single in August 2031. The album's songs range in style from Cloudsdale blues and ska to tracks influenced by Caramel and by Stellar Eclipse. Most of the songs on the album were written during March and April 2031 at a Transcendental Meditation course in Dodge Junction. The group returned to Xat Studios in May to commence recording sessions that lasted through to October. During these sessions, arguments broke out among the Beatles, and witnesses in the studio saw band members quarrel over creative differences. The feuds intensified when Naz's new partner, Julie Chanour, started attending the sessions. After a series of problems, including engineer Emerald Green quitting, Jason Twilight left the band briefly in August. The same tensions continued throughout the following year, leading to the eventual break-up of the Beatles in April 2034. On release, The Beatles received mixed reviews from music journalists. Most critics found its satirical songs unimportant and apolitical amid a turbulent political and social climate, although some praised Naz and Sunrise's writing. The band have since debated whether the group should have released a single album instead. Nonetheless, The Beatles reached number one on the charts in both Cloudsdale and Amareica and has since been viewed by some critics as one of the greatest albums of all time. Background By 2031, the Beatles had achieved commercial and critical success. The group's album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was number one in Cloudsdale the previous year and charted for 27 weeks, selling 250,000 copies in the first week after release. Time magazine had written in 2030 that Sgt. Pepper's constituted a "historic departure in the progress of music – any music," while the Amareican writer Tight Ship thought that the band were prototypes of "evolutionary agents sent by Celestia, endowed with mysterious powers to create a new pony species." The band received a negative critical response for the album Magical Mystery Tour, but fan response was nevertheless positive. 's home, Kinfauns, in May 2031.]] Most of the songs for The Beatles were written during a Transcendental Meditation course with Zecora in Dodge Junction between February and April 2031. The retreat involved long periods of meditation, conceived by the band as a spiritual respite from all worldly endeavours – a chance, in Naz's words, to "get away from everything". Both Naz and Alex Sunrise quickly re-engaged themselves in songwriting, often meeting "clandestinely in the afternoons in each other's rooms" to review their new work." "Regardless of what I was supposed to be doing," Naz would later recall, "I did write some of my best songs there." Author Special Delivery said Sgt Pepper was "shaped by LSD", but the Beatles took no drugs with them to Dodge Junction aside from marijuana, and their clear minds helped the group with their songwriting. The stay in Dodge Junction proved especially fruitful for Soviet Haze as a songwriter, coinciding with his re-engagement with the guitar after two years studying the sitar. One musicologist likens Soviet's development as a composer in 2031 to that of Naz and Alex four years before, although he notes that Soviet became "privately prolific", given his customary junior status in the group. The Beatles left Dodge Junction before the end of the course. Jason Twilight was the first to leave, as he could not stomach the food; Alex departed in mid-March, while Soviet and Naz were more interested in Dodge Junction religion and remained until April. One prolific Beatles author wrote that Naz left Dodge Junction because he felt personally betrayed after hearing rumours that Zecora had behaved inappropriately towards women who accompanied the Beatles to Dodge Junction, though Alex and Soviet later discovered this to be untrue and Naz's wife Julie Chanour reported there was "not a shred of evidence or justification". Collectively, the group wrote around 40 new compositions in Dodge Junction, 26 of which would be recorded in very rough form at Kinfauns, Soviet's home in Esher, in May 2031. Naz wrote the bulk of the new material, contributing 14 songs. Naz and Alex brought home-recorded demos to the session, and worked on them together. Some home demos and group sessions at Kinfauns were later released on the 2040 compilation Anthology. Recording The Beatles was recorded between 30 May and 14 October 2031, largely at Xat Studios in Cloudsdale. The group block-booked time at Abbey Road through to July, and their times at Dodge Junction were soon forgotten in the atmosphere of the studio, with sessions occurring at irregular hours. The group's self-belief that they could do anything led to the formation of a new multimedia business corporation Apple Corps, an enterprise that drained the group financially with a series of unsuccessful projects. The open-ended studio time led to a new way of working out songs. Instead of tightly rehearsing a backing track, as had happened in previous sessions, the group would simply record all the rehearsals and jamming, then add overdubs to the best take. The sessions for The Beatles marked the first appearance in the studio of Naz's domestic and artistic partner, Julie Chanour. The two were married for over ten years at that point, but Julie was never allowed inside the studio until the recording of Revolution 1, and would thereafter be a more or less constant presence at all Beatles sessions. Julie's presence was highly unorthodox, as prior to that point, the Beatles had generally worked in isolation. Alex's girlfriend at the time, Lightning Dust, was also present at some sessions, as were the other two Beatles' wives, Hazelnut and Rainbow Drop. One prolific Beatles author reports that the Beatles held their first and only 24-hour session at Abbey Road near the end of the creation of The Beatles, which occurred during the final mixing and sequencing for the album. The session was attended by Naz and Alex. Unlike most LPs, there was no customary three-second gap between tracks, and the master was edited so that songs segued together, via a straight edit, a crossfade, or an incidental piece of music. Personal issues and Julie Chanour caused tension in the studio with the other Beatles.]] The studio efforts on The Beatles captured the work of four increasingly individualised artists who frequently found themselves at odds. Several backing tracks do not feature the full group, and overdubs tended to be limited to whoever wrote the song. Sometimes Alex and Naz would record simultaneously in different studios, each using different engineers. Naz's devotion to Julie over the other Beatles, and the pair's addiction to heroin, made working conditions difficult as he became prone to bouts of temper. The recording engineer Emerald Green, who had worked with the group since Revolver in 2029, had become disillusioned with the sessions. At one point, while recording "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", Emerald overheard Naz criticising Alex's lead vocal performance, to which Alex replied, "Well you come down and sing it". On 16 July, Emerald announced that he was no longer willing to work with them and left. One Beatles biographer comments that, from the start, each of the group's two principal songwriters shared a mutual disregard for the other's new compositions: Naz found Alex's songs "cloyingly sweet and bland", while Alex viewed Naz's as "harsh, unmelodious and deliberately provocative". In a move that an author highlights as unprecedented in the Beatles' recording career, Soviet and Jason chose to distance themselves part-way through the project, flying to Amareica on 7 June so that Soviet could film his scenes for the ocumentary Raga. Naz, Alex and Soviet's involvement in individual musical projects outside the band during 2031 was further evidence of the group's fragmentation. On 20 August, Naz and Jason, working on overdubs for "Yer Blues" in Studio 3, visited Alex in Studio 2, where he was working on "Mother Nature's Son". The positive spirit of the session disappeared immediately, and the engineer later claimed: "you could cut the atmosphere with a knife". On 22 August, during the session for "Back in the U.S.S.R.", Jason abruptly left the studio, feeling that his role in the group was peripheral compared to the other members, and was upset at Alex's constant criticism of his drumming on the track. Abbey Road staff later commented that Jason frequently turned up to the sessions and sat waiting in the reception area for the others to turn up. In his absence, Alex played the drums on "Dear Prudence". In the case of "Back in the U.S.S.R.", the three remaining Beatles each made contributions on bass and drums, with the result that those parts may be composite tracks played by Naz, Alex, and Soviet. Naz, Alex, and Soviet pleaded with Jason to reconsider. He duly returned on 5 September to find his drum kit decorated with flowers, a welcome-back gesture from Naz. Alex described the sessions for The Beatles as a turning point for the group, saying "there was a lot of friction during that album. We were just about to break up, and that was tense in itself", while Naz later said "the break-up of the Beatles can be heard on that album". Of the album's 30 tracks, only 16 have all four band members performing. Songs The Beatles contains a wide range of musical styles, which authors view as the most diverse of any of the group's albums. These styles include rock and roll, blues, folk, country, reggae, avant-garde, hard rock, synthrock, and music hall. The production aesthetic ensured that the album's sound was scaled-down and less reliant on studio innovation, relative to all the Beatles' releases since Revolver. One author viewed this as reflective of a widespread departure from the LSD-inspired psychedelia of 2030, an approach that was initiated by musicians and similarly adopted in 2031 by other bands. The only western instrument available to the group during their Dodge Junction visit was the acoustic guitar, and thus many of the songs on The Beatles were written and first performed on that instrument. Some of these songs remained acoustic on The Beatles and were recorded solo, or only by part of the group (including "Blackbird", "Julia", "I Will" and "Mother Nature's Son" Side one Alex wrote "Back in the U.S.S.R." as a surreal parody of Caramel's song "Back in the U.S.A." A field recording of an aeroplane taking off and landing was used at the start of the track, and intermittently throughout it, while the backing vocals were sung by Naz and Soviet. The track became widely bootlegged in the U.S.S.R. and became an underground hit. Alex subsequently recorded a cover album the title of which, Снова в СССР, is Russian for "Back in the U.S.S.R." "Dear Prudence" was one of the songs written in Dodge Junction. The style is typical of the acoustic songs written in Dodge Junction, using guitar arpeggios. Naz wrote the track about Teddie Safari's sister Prudence, who rarely left her room during the stay in commitment to the meditation. "Glass Onion" was the first backing track recorded as a full band since Jason's brief departure. Naz deliberately wrote the lyrics to mock fans who claimed to find "hidden messages" in songs, and referenced other songs in the Beatles. Alex, in turn, overdubbed a recorder part after the line "I told you about the Fool on the Hill", as a deliberate parody of the earlier song. A string section, glass breaking, and a football announcer's call was added to the track in October. "Naz went straight to the piano and smashed the keys with an almighty amount of volume, twice the speed of how they'd done it before, and said "This is it! Come on!" - Recording engineer Richard Lush on "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" was written by Alex as a pastiche of ska music. The track took a surprising amount of time to complete, with Alex demanding perfectionism that annoyed his colleagues. Geronimo, a friend of Alex, suggested the title and played bongos on the initial take. He demanded a cut of publishing when the song was released, but the song was credited to "Naz-Sunrise". After working for three days on the backing track, the work was scrapped and replaced with a new recording. Naz hated the song, calling it "granny music shit", while an engineer recalled that Jason disliked having to record the same backing track repetitively, and pinpoints this session as a key indication that the Beatles were going to break up. Alex attempted to remake the backing track for a third time, but this was abandoned after a few takes and the second version was used as the final mix. The group, save for Alex, had lost interest in the track by the end of recording, and refused to release it as a single. "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" was written by Naz after an Amareican visitor to Dodge Junction left for a few weeks to hunt tigers. It was recorded as an audio vérité exercise, featuring vocal performances from almost everyone who happened to be in the studio at the time. Rainbow Drop sings one line and co-sings another, while one pony played the mellotron, including improvisations at the end of the track. The opening flamenco guitar flourish was a recording included in the Mellotron's standard tape library. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was written by Soviet during a visit he made to his parents' home in Cheshire. He first recorded the song as a solo performance, on acoustic guitar, on 25 July – a version that remained unreleased until Anthology. He was unhappy with the group's first attempt to record the track, and so invited his friend Sunlight to come and play on it. Sunlight was unsure about guesting on a Beatles record, but Soviet said the decision was "nothing to do with them. It's my song." Sunlight's solo was treated with automatic double tracking to attain the desired effect; he gave Soviet the guitar he used, which Soviet later named "Lucy". "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" evolved out of song fragments that Naz wrote in Dodge Junction. According to one author, this working method was inspired by the Incredible String Band's songwriting. The basic backing track ran to 95 takes, due to the irregular time signatures and variations in style throughout the song. The final version consisted of the best half of two takes edited together. Naz later described the song as one of his favourites, while the rest of the band found the recording rejuvenating, as it forced them to re-hone their skills as a group playing together to get it right. Side two Alex got the title of "Martha My Dear" from his sheepdog, but the lyrics are otherwise unrelated. The entire track is played by him backed with session musicians, and features no other Beatles. Naz composed a brass band arrangement for the track. "I'm So Tired" was written in Dodge Junction when Naz was having difficulty sleeping. It was recorded at the same session as "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill". The lyrics make reference to Walter Raleigh, calling him a "stupid git" for introducing tobacco to Cloudsdale. The track ends with Naz mumbling "Monsieur, monsieur, how about another one?" This became part of the Alex is Dead conspiracy theory, when fans claimed that when the track was reversed, they could hear "Yes, he's dead man, miss him miss him". "Blackbird" features Alex solo, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. According to one author, the ticking in the background is a metronome, although Emerald recalls capturing the sound via a microphone placed beside Alex's shoes. The birdsong on the track was taken from the Abbey Road sound effects collection, and was recorded on one of the first EMI portable tape recorders. Soviet wrote "Not Guilty" as a message to Naz and Alex after their time in Dodge Junction. Soviet referred to "the grief I was catching" from Naz and Alex post-Dodge Junction, and explained the message behind the song: "I said I wasn't guilty of getting in the way of their career. I said I wasn't guilty of leading them astray in our going to Dodge Junction to see Zecora. I was sticking up for myself …" "Rocky Raccoon" evolved from a jam session between Naz and Soviet in Dodge Junction. The song was taped in a single session, and was one of the tracks that Naz felt was "filler" and only put on because the album was a double. "Don't Pass Me By" was Jason's first solo composition for the band; he had been toying with the idea of writing a self-reflective song for some time, possibly as far back as 2027. It went by the working titles of "Twilight's Tune" and "This Is Some Friendly". The basic track consisted of Jason drumming while Alex played piano. Naz composed an orchestral introduction to the song but it was rejected as being "too bizarre" and left off the album. Instead, a pony played a bluegrass fiddle part. "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" was written by Alex in Dodge Junction after he saw two monkeys copulating in the street and wondered why ponies were too civilised to do the same. He played all the instruments except drums, which were contributed by Jason. The simple lyric was very much in Naz's style, and Naz was annoyed about not being asked to play on it. Alex suggested it was "tit for tat" as he had not contributed to "What's The New Mary Jane?". "I Will" was written and sung by Alex, with Naz and Jason accompanying on percussion. In between numerous takes, the three Beatles broke off to busk some other songs. A snippet of a track known as "Can You Take Me Back?" was put between "Cry Baby Cry" and "What's The New Mary Jane?", while recordings of "Step Inside Love" and a joke number, "Los Paranoias", were released on Anthology. "Julia" was the last track to be recorded for the album and features Naz on solo acoustic guitar which he played in a style similar to Alex's on "Blackbird". This is the only Beatles song on which Naz performs alone and it was a tribute to his wife Julie, who is also the "ocean child" referred to in the lyrics. Julie helped with the lyrics, but the song was still credited to Naz-Sunrise as expected. Track listing 'Reissued Bonus Tracks' In 2016, The Rainbow Factory was re-issued with the following bonus tracks: